Life Among The Bottom Feeders – 1995 Interview

Today contributor Bailey forwarded a 1995 interview. This is not only your typical article to promote the release of “A Boy Named Goo”. There is some very interesting info here, which I have never heard before.

The article is based on an encounter the journalist had with the band at a specific event, where the Goo Goo Dolls were playing on the same stage as another soon-to-be-famous band, that is The Flaming Lips. After the initial paragraphs briefly talking about the band’s past and a bit about their personal lives, we are exposed to some new trivia, which I summarize below:

• John explains why former drummer George Tutuska was fired. I have read quite a few comments on the matter made by Robby, but this is the first time I read one from him. He claims: “I’ll tell you exactly what happened,” says Rzeznik, his voice betraying agitation. “We had differences of opinion and philosophy and everything, and…I don’t hate the guy, neither does Robby. But we just couldn’t settle our differences. It got to the point where it was either this band didn’t exist or we made that change.”
• In reference to the previous release, the band was actually not happy with the label’s decision to pick “We Are The Normal” as the first single, and would have preferred a rocker like “Fallin’ Down” or “Already There“. I’m quite surprised about the latter choice. Apparently, the Goo Goo Dolls complained about the decision for a few months, until they were told to shut up and accept what had been chosen. According to them, the song was not representative of the album. Conversely, for the “A Boy Named Goo” singles, they claim to have had more control on which songs to put out on the radio.
• Comments about the monetary issues during the infamous 1993-1994 years.

The article also came with a picture, which we’ve seen before, posted below.

The interview was posted online but apparently the webpage is not live anymore. Only its archived version can be browsed.

Life Among the Bottom Feeders

After dumping their longtime drummer, the Goo Goo Dolls fight to be heard

By Bud Scoppa

1. The Goo Goo Dolls Play for the Industry

The upper tier of the Whisky a Go Go is off-limits to the paying customers tonight. That means the weasels ­­the ones with the official wrist bands and drink tickets­­can peer down at the stage from a comfortable vantage point rather than having to rub shoulders with the hoi polloi downstairs. The occasion is a Warner Brothers showcase set up so radio geeks from around the country assembled here for the Jeff Pollack Convention, a radio/promo confab, can get a taste of the Flaming Lips and the Goo Goo Dolls, a pair of the label’s developing acts.

At the moment, the Goo Goo Dolls’ opening set is being delayed so that guitarist Johnny Rzeznik and bass player Robby Takac can be photographed with various label and radio notables. During a 15-minute period, as clubgoers mill around below, Rzeznik and Takac pose with dozens of people in various groupings, the photographer’s rapid-firing strobe freezing each set-up. The two musicians would rather be onstage, but for now Rzeznik smiles gamely for each shot while the barefoot, plaid-bermuda-clad Takac mugs. They’re veterans who take this quarter-hour of attention as a manifestation of a new season, a fresh start.

Rzeznik and Takac know from first-hand experience that the cameras could be aimed at other Warners acts two or three months down the line if the first track from their brand-new fifth album, A Boy Named Goo , fails to win over the programmers at the 62 or so influential commercial alternative stations that report their playlists to the trade rag Radio & Records . Tonight, though, there’s every reason to be hopeful, because this week the Goo Goos track, “Only One,” is tied for most-added in R&R; with Matthew Sweet’s “Sick of Myself.”

Every one of the Warner Brothers label people posing with the two musicians seems friendly and supportive, and in large part this show of enthusiasm is genuine. Most major-label staffers were motivated to get into the record biz by a lifelong connection with music; some turn hardened and cynical, but the majority remain passionate about the music and the artists making it. Rzeznik and Takac have known some of the Warners people they’re schmoozing with since 1991, when, through Warner Brother’s then-new affiliation with Metal Blade Records, the Goo Goos’ label, the band became part of the major’s roster, along with an estimated 200-300 other acts.

It would be literally impossible for a company as big as Warners to prioritize every record it releases, but the Goo Goos’ two previous Metal Blade/Warner Brothers albums were conscientiously marketed by the major, and there’s no reason to expect Warners to expend any less effort marketing A Boy Named Goo , which boasts the strongest material and production of the three releases.

At the same time, Rzeznik and Takac realize that, tonight at least, they’re playing second fiddle to the Oklahoma-based Flaming Lips, whose album, Transmissions From the Satellite Heart , has suddenly come to life more than a year after its release. The Goo Goos have a shot, but the Lips have momentum, and you know Rzeznik and Takac would like nothing better than to ride a similar wave after nine years of base-building, from the Buffalo band’s self-released debut in ’87 to this, their fifth album. Warners has provided them with the requisite tools: video, reviews and interviews with the music press, advertising, a pre-release promotional tour (of which tonight’s show is a part), tour support monies to keep them on the road for several months after the release­­ underscoring the sense of prioritization by showing up en masse for this gig.

A cynic might point out that they have to show up, even if they’d rather be home watching “Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman” with their families on this rainy Saturday night in Los Angeles. Or maybe they’re really here to celebrate the impending breakthrough of the Flaming Lips, wishing they didn’t have to endure a 45-minute set by the opening act. For a long-struggling vet, these questions circulate endlessly through their consciences. The thing is, you just don’t know.

Musicians, who have been through this two-year cycle of writing, demoing, preproduction, recording, waiting, shooting the clip, waiting, touring, waiting and hoping a second track goes to radio, tend to be a bit paranoid. How many times can a band go through this cycle without breaking before the ride is over and it’s time to get a real job?

Too often in the rock biz, eventual success doesn’t have a whole lot to do with whether a band is any good. So even if you’re brimming with confidence about the level of artistry you’ve attained, you know that failure and heartbreak are always lurking just around the corner. The Goo Goo Dolls are an exceptional band, with hooky songs, quality vocals, enormous energy and something to say. What they don’t have is an image ­­indeed, they evidence a seeming aversion to playing that game (Witness Robby’s stage outfit: the same bermudas, the same bare feet). In the MTV Age, lack of a well-defined image can be far more damaging than not being able to play or sing (need I cite examples?). And the Goo Goo Dolls’ inherent poppiness makes the possibility of a breakthrough even more remote in a world that values heaviness over hooks. But that doesn’t mean they won’t give it their best shot. In fact, they feel fortunate to just be in the game.

If the band’s pop sense recalls early Cheap Trick and the Replacements, the Goo Goos’ energy level is pure punk. On the Whisky stage before a sparse, subdued crowd (many of the Lips fans haven’t yet arrived), they crank it up as if they were in front of a horde of diehard fans, rarely even pausing between songs. They use wireless instruments in order to have unlimited mobility, and the cherubic Takac bounces around the stage like a pinball with hair. A roadie continually comes on stage to pick up Robby’s fallen microphone stand; at one point he has to extract the microphone from beneath the butt of Takac, who finds himself on his back, still picking notes on his bass as if he hadn’t yet noticed he was prone. Rzeznik, who sings the band’s more emotive, anthemlike songs, tends to climb atop the monitors that ring the front of the stage, as if he’s about to launch himself into the crowd, which he’s been known to do.

“Our technical prowess is, like, nil as players,” says Rzeznik during an interview. “I mean, we’re competent, but I don’t think the show suffers if I jump up on the drum riser, completely miss a guitar solo, jump into the audience and play with the guitar out of tune for three songs ­­I don’t care. ‘Cause it’s the energy of the show that’s most important, and to provoke the energy in the room to get that high, and then get spit back up onto the stage by a crowd of people, and then just lay back and watch them go fuckin’ nuts on each other and be completely entertained by the people that come to see us, that’s the best. If the mood and the energy is in the room, it doesn’t matter how technically great you play the songs.”

He won’t be attempting any acrobatics tonight, though, not unless he wants to crack his head open. Rock Rule #43: Do not ­­repeat, do not stage-dive into an industry crowd. They won’t catch you.

This may not be their audience, but these guys are pros­­ they don’t let up or exhibit a hint of sullenness, apart from Rzeznik’s sarcastic suggestion to the blasé clubgoers that everyone be absolutely quiet. And those 20 or 30 people on the floor who aren’t staring blankly like extras in a George Romero zombie flick voice their appreciation at the end of the set, but not loudly enough to warrant an encore. Some nights you play your heart out and hardly anybody gives a shit. Hey, it’s a tough business.

2. The Struggle To Make It

Like other veterans of the rock wars, Rzeznik and Takac have learned that they have virtually absolute control over certain areas of their careers, but very little influence in other areas. Generally speaking, a band gives up control at the moment it delivers each album to the major label that signed them. Until then, it’s their party.

Even the most hands-on A&R; people allow the songwriting process to take place free of intervention. Telling a songwriter what to write would be the height of presumptuousness. It is during the writing phase that the artist operates most autonomously as he creates the raw material that will later be shaped into a coherent album.

Rzeznik, who went to a vocational high school in order to become a plumber, offers a vivid analogy about how it feels to a writer when a song idea arrives: “The moment when it comes, I like to compare it to, like, the catharsis of a good dump after being constipated for a few weeks.”

Takac howls with laughter before his partner continues: “This was a tough record to write my songs on; this time it was really tough for me. And I really didn’t wanna have to put the mask on. I wanted to take a look in the darker corner and expose that part. Generally my life’s pretty good, but it’s kinda weird to see some of the things that go on around you. I wanted to get out of my own head and get into someone else’s this time.

During preproduction, which took place in the band’s Buffalo rehearsal studio, producer Lou Giordano (whom they’d chosen, with input from their A&R; man, Robbie Cavallo), was on hand to help fine-tune the songs and arrangements. “He’s technically a very meticulous person as far as timing and being in key when you’re singing,” Rzeznik says of Giordano “He’s a ball-buster about that stuff. And when you’re writing lyrics, he’d say, ‘Would you say that in real life?’ I’d go, ‘If I would say that in real life, I wouldn’t be writing a song, would I? I’d be saying it to somebody.’ And then he’d go, ‘Well, I’m not sure that makes any sense. “An albino, a mulatto, a mosquito, my libido,” what does that mean? You wanna be a mook? Be a mook.'”

There’s nothing mooky about “Flat Top,” the sociopolitical anthem that’s the centerpiece of A Boy Named Goo . The song, Rzeznik explains, is “about how we live in a society where it’s harder and harder to get an education, to get a job, to be a human, and we constantly have the idiot box in front of us bombarding us with what we’re s’posed to be, what we’re s’posed to have. And that means that the things that we’re supposed to be and have are continuously put out of our reach.

“It seems as though there’s a process going on in this country of de-educating people,” he continues. “That there’s war being waged on one class of our society, and the thing that pisses me off the most is the things that empower the common man are the things that are always taken away when there’s a budget gap to fill. Where the fuck are our priorities? It seems like the value of destroying human life is far more important than the value of enhancing it, of enriching it.”

He sighs. “It’s so hard to be a kid now. Because time and time again, everything that seems to be something that you can look to for faith becomes exposed as a fraud. But even though there isn’t as much opportunity for financial success, there’s other things in life that are far more valuable.

“The kids that I meet when we go out and play are the greatest people,” Rzeznik says with unabashed earnestness. “When I was 16 years old, I was out takin’ dope, and bangin’ every girl I could, and it’s just not like that anymore. Every kid I meet is such a good person, and they live their life in earnest. Even though there’s not financial security, there can be ethical security, and you can elevate yourself as a person and do as much as you can for the people around you.

“That’s always been the thematic premise for a lot of the stuff that we do. It’s like, things are fucked, but we’re all in this together, so let’s try and make the best of it. Sort of, uh, a turd polisher.”

3. Taking a Stand Against the World

There have been many instances in which an A&R; person or producer has strongly suggested to a band that a member be replaced, usually because of incompetence or an attitude problem. But Rzeznik and Takac needed no prompting from the outside to make a change in the Goo Goo Dolls lineup right after they’d completed the new album. Nonetheless, it was the toughest decision they’ve ever had to make. Jointly, they decided to fire drummer George Tutuska, who’d been in the trio from the beginning. But why? He’s a solid drummer.

“I’ll tell you exactly what happened,” says Rzeznik, his voice betraying agitation. “We had differences of opinion and philosophy and everything, and…I don’t hate the guy, neither does Robby. But we just couldn’t settle our differences. It got to the point where it was either this band didn’t exist or we made that change.

“We learned how to dance the emotional sidestep for so many years,” he continues, clearly wanting the group’s fans to understand. “And it’s sad. But it’s like a relationship with a woman, and I know you’ve had a girlfriend in your life where the relationship went on and on and on, and you woke up one morning, and you took a deep breath, and you finally just said, ‘Look, the best thing we can do for each other is to stop this.’ And I pray­­I really do, I pray that someday we’ll be friends. And that’s just the way it is, but it certainly does sting. And that’s that.” Rzeznik claps his hands with finality, closing the subject.

The artist writes the songs and generally chooses the producer, but the record company picks the singles or tracks that are serviced to radio. Typically, these decisions are made by the A&R; person, the promotion department or an uneasy confederation of the two. And it isn’t unusual for the artist to disagree with the label’s decision. This happened to the Goo Goo Dolls two years ago when Warners decided to go with the ballad “We Are the Normal” as the first radio track from Superstar Car Wash , rather than a signature rocker like “Fallin’ Down” or “Already There.”

“We Are the Normal’ was not the right single, and we did not choose that single,” says Takac emphatically. “Something tells me there were some 2 a.m. phone calls to our producer [Gavin McKillop] occurring about that song during the production of that record that we didn’t know about. A lot of time was spent on that song, and it was never put to us that that song would ever be a single, really. As a matter of fact, for three months we screamed and yelled and stomped our feet, and it came down to some people saying, ‘We know better than you. Sorry.’ So we backed off and the attitude got was sort of shitty, and we ended up coming out of the box with a song that was not representative.”

“We Are the Normal,” with its strings and Paul Westerberg-penned lyrics, got plenty of airplay but failed to generate album sales. Nevertheless, in a long-term career sense it may have been an effective awareness-builder assuming the record company hasn’t lost patience in terms of the act’s career development. But so often these days, when a label leads with a track it considers to have hit potential and that track fails, having incurred $100,000 or more in promotional expenses, there is no follow-up single. The marketing budget is tapped, and the band goes home to await its fate: Not, “Will there be a second single?” but, “Will we get our option picked up?”

In the meantime, the musicians still have to pay the rent, and then there’s the larger, if more theoretical, matter of being unrecouped: owing the label for your recording expenses, tour support and, typically, half the costs of the videos. The good news is that, if you’re dropped, you don’t have to pay back the “loan.” The bad news is you’re history. Thus far, the Goo Goo Dolls have made the cut.

“The want for a hit right out of the barrel is so big now,” says Takac, “because the philosophy these days is not to build a band but to get a hit single. We have changed [that approach] on this record, and we got the commitment [from Warners]. We did not go with our strongest track first off. It’s not the out-of-the-park hit that they were trying to go for with ‘We Are the Normal.’ ‘Flat Top’ was the label’s choice first off. Through some discussions with some people, in particular our A&R; person Robbie Cavallo, who actually produced a couple songs on this record. Robbie said, ‘Well, maybe you guys should go for an attitude thing first.’ And obviously, 37 adds later, I guess he was right.”

The danger of leading with a set-up track instead of a potential hit is that, if it sinks without a trace, the label may give up on the album prematurely. In this case, however, the tactic seems to be working. Maybe this will finally be the one to break the Goo Goo Dolls. But whatever happens, Rzeznik has no regrets. He’s doing exactly what he wants to do, and that’s been the case throughout his nine-year career in rock & roll.

“For us, there’s never been a compromise,” Rzeznik says. “Nobody has ever come to me and said, ‘You can’t do that,’ or ‘We want you to do this,’ or ‘Get a perm,’ ‘Wear these pants,’ ‘Don’t hang out with him,’ ‘We want you to be seen here.’ Maybe with Madonna it happens, or maybe with music that is overwhelmingly popular and makes tens of millions of dollars. I don’t know if they bother with bands like us, that don’t make a lot of money for the label. We’re sort of like bottom feeders. We get to hang out down here and do whatever the hell we want. That’s cool.”

“The fact that our last record didn’t sell huge amounts never led me to believe that record was any less good,” says Takac, backing up his partner. “There were always factors involved that we thought weren’t our fault or that could’ve happened in different ways to make each record bigger than it actually was. We’ve developed a confidence in what we do which has nothing to do with selling records, really.”

“You have to stand against the world,” says Rzeznik, sounding not like a romantic but the bearer of hard-earned wisdom. “You can’t really measure what you’re doing by the commercial success or the critical success of it, because that’s not what it’s all about. It would be nice; we haven’t seen it yet. Eventually you start to lose that need for approval. It’s enough to know I did my best and there was no more. The rest of the world be damned. It’s process-oriented too. It’s really important to be in love with the fact of getting up every day, and it doesn’t matter what the outcome is. That’s what makes it special. That’s success.”